


In Her Honor

by dandelion_san



Series: khr ficlets [3]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Female Sawada Tsunayoshi, Friendship, Gen, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 22:23:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10291514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelion_san/pseuds/dandelion_san
Summary: In which Sawada Tsunayoshi is born a girl.





	

 Sawada Tsunayoshi is born a girl and although he is briefly disappointed, Iemitsu is mostly relieved. A daughter to dote on, he thinks. Far away from blood and mafia. Pure and innocent. His _child_.

“My little darling," he coos to the baby. “My tiny, itty-bitty tuna fish!”

The nurse in charge of writing the birth certificates hesitates over her name. _Tsunayoshi_ , she mouths, brows furrowed and uncertain. This is a little scandalous, isn’t it? Out loud, she asks the couple if they are sure. After a minute of their reply, she writes the characters down, slowly and carefully.

The ink is barely dry when Iemitsu leaves for Italy.

Nana smiles distantly and thinks about nursery room colors and spinning mobiles.

 

* * *

Tsuna grows up to be a quiet and introverted child, cursed with an inherent clumsiness that leave her bruised and teary eyed. She falls over a lot. She gets her dresses torn and dirty. Her hair is perpetually messy and thick, so she ties it up in a lopsided pony-tail.

She is as cute as a button and the boys on the playground pull at her hair and clothes. When she cries, they call her a crybaby. When she tries to ignore them, they scrabble desperately for her attention.

The adults joke about adorable playground crushes. Nana dreams that her child will grow up beautiful, a perfect _Yamato nadeshiko._

 

* * *

 

(Iemitsu came to visit once, bringing along an old man that smelled of metal. The man had looked at a little girl and saw brilliant potential. With good intentions, he lifted one finger and sealed it all away.

He had sealed _her_ away.)

 

* * *

 

And it is _easy_ to bully Tsuna. She single-handedly brings down the class average by several points. She is last on every exam. She constantly stutters whenever she is called on during class.

Awful at school, awful at sports, she isn’t good at anything except maybe for cooking of which Nana had taught her extensively on.

Tsuna is good at that stuff – cooking, cleaning, sewing.

She grits her teeth as her hand carefully concocts delicious lunches, she forces a scream down as she learns which cleaning product is the best to use, she almost cries as her hand skillfully weaves stitches, all under Nana’s watchful eyes.

Nana compliments her, sighing in relief. _This is good, you can still be a good wife, Tsu-chan_.

Tsuna hates it. She hates it. She hates it.

 

* * *

 

She sees them, those strong confident girls and wonders – _why can’t I be like that._

 

* * *

 

When she starts middle school, it becomes worse. She can ignore the jeers and taunts of _Dame-Tsuna_. She has grown used to it, after all. Mostly all talk and no bite.

But the _bullying_. Psychological warfare at its finest. Tsuna often finds her shoes either missing or filled with needles. Her desk is consistently covered in cruel insults and drawings no matter how much she tries to wash it all away and after a while, she just gives up. She dreads P.E. because her clothes sometimes go missing and she eventually learns to keep extra uniforms. One time she is cornered and her long hair is shorn away. The adults see and do nothing. They say nothing. They smile with condescension and she learns to hate them too.

That day she skips school and spends the day at home crying. She comes back the next, hair cut short and fluffy. She doesn’t look at anyone’s eyes.

Several students are suspended, her desk replaced with a clean one.

She nods at Hibari the next time she sees him with a curt _thank-you_. He coolly tells her that if she skips class again, he’ll bite her to death.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna thinks that Hibari is one crazy sonuvabitch and she’s not the only one. Unlike others, she’s sort of okay with it because all he cares about is Namimori and rules, and bullies are against the _rules_. That means he doesn’t discriminate. Herbivores will be herbivores and he’ll bite them to death thoroughly. No consequence.

Well. Nobody said she was a saint.

 

* * *

 

But they can’t keep her away from school. She has a reason to keep living. Here is a secret: Tsuna is in love.

 

* * *

 

Her name is Sasagawa Kyouko and she is the sun of Tsuna’s existence.

 

* * *

 

Kyouko doesn’t… really stand up for her. But that’s okay! She’s perfect and Tsuna knows that if she even tries than she’ll get bullied too. Kyouko doesn’t deserve that.

She’s already so kind to Tsuna. She’s the only one who has smiled at her sincerely and asked if she was okay.

Tsuna adores her, fervently. She’s only jealous of Kurokawa who gets to be by her side every day and who had once told her that she was a weak monkey with no guts. Tsuna doesn’t let it affect her because she already _knows that_ , but as long as she gets to see Kyouko every day, she’ll deal with it, even if it means putting up with her classmates.

Speaking of.

Tsuna tampers down her annoyance when she spots Yamamoto laughing out of the corner of her eyes. Out of everyone, she hates him the most. She hates his friends who keep asking her for dates as a joke, she hates his fangirls who are the cruelest towards her, she hates how the teachers fawn over him, and she hates _him_.

His sweet, smiling façade can’t fool her because she’s seen the way he looks at her when she is being bullied and so she _knows_ that Yamamoto Takeshi is not a nice boy with his empty eyes.

Like watching scenery pass by on a train.

 

* * *

 

And then when Tsuna is thirteen, a baby in a suit came to her house to stay.

He shoots her and-

 

* * *

 

“Please,” Tsuna pleads. “Please don’t ever do that again.”

Reborn tilts his head, genuinely curious. “Why?” he asks. Tsuna trembles and tries not to cry.

She says, “I was only in my underwear. Your bullet burnt my clothes off.” She says, “You are a baby so I don’t think you get it.” She says, “Did you think it was funny?”

Then she presses her lips together in a tight line because it wouldn’t change anything to scream at a baby.

She doesn’t say, _I am a girl._ She doesn’t say, _I am vulnerable._ She doesn’t say, _if you’re going to send me out like that then give me something pointy and sharp._

The baby looks at her, eyes accessing. He nods slowly. “I’m still going to have to unlock your flames,” he says after accessing her thoughtfully. “But I will not shoot you with this bullet anymore”.

She doesn’t miss the implications of _this bullet_ – (there are more than one?! What the fuck, what the fuck, _what the fuck_ ) – but her relief shows visibly and the strange baby-who-is-not-a-baby kicks her in the head for that.

But goddamn, he does it. A few days after the transfer student showed up and Tsuna confessed her love to Kyouko, something warm and beautiful unlocks inside her and spreads out like the creation of a universe.

The world gains colors, her head isn’t foggy, and her body is light. The clarity of it all takes her aback and she feels like living for the first time. _I am here_. _I am here_. _I exist_.

The next time she looks in the mirror, her eyes look almost golden. And when she looks closer, she swears she can see fire flicking behind them.

 

* * *

 

“What did you do to me?” she asks Reborn, not ungratefully.

“I just unsealed your flames,” he says, casual, but there’s something smug in there.

 

* * *

 

Strangely enough, Yamamoto starts following her around. Gokudera yells at him to _piss off_ and _go away_ , like a possessive puppy.

Tsuna likes Gokudera. They’re friends, even with all this messy mafia stuff and the refusal to call her anything but the Tenth. (She’s working on it). Despite their first meeting, she’s come to understand that it wasn’t because of anything personal and he looks at her with a disbelieving expression sometimes, like he can’t believe she’s there, that she chose to accept him. Kindred souls, they are.

She said to him once, “I’ve never had a friend before,” and Gokudera had whispered back, “Me neither.” Even if he scares her sometimes, she knows that he will understand her the most.

But back to Yamamoto.

“I-is there something you want,” she mutters to him after a few days of his weird, not-stalking. They’re in an empty hallway, one of the rare times that Gokudera is not with her. She has a hand in the pocket of her skirt, thumbing at the pocket-knife Reborn had given her.

He tilts his head and considers her. “You’re interesting,” is all he says and smiles. Tsuna wants to punch it off of him. The boy who looks at her like she is nothing continues on to ask, “Do you want to be friends?”

 

* * *

 

Gokudera is absolutely _livid_ when Yamamoto walks home with them.

 

* * *

 

Nana, predictably, coos over the guests and cooks up dinner fit for a king. Her eyes gleam as she looks at the boys and then to Tsuna. She hides a coy smile behind her hand. She looks proud.

Tsuna holds her chopsticks in a white-knuckled grip and stares at Nana with something akin to hatred. Reborn studies this mother-daughter interaction with dark beetle eyes, and hums.

 

* * *

 

Later, Nana asks, “So which one is your boyfriend, Tsu-chan?” She sounds like a child, excitedly clapping her hands together.

Tsuna freezes. She’s glad that Gokudera and Yamamoto have left, though there is a small worry in the back of her mind that Gokudera lives in a box or something.

“They’re just friends,” she says. “I don’t even like any of them that way.”

“You’re young, you’ll eventually find those feelings.” Nana sighs dreamily. “Why, when I met Iemitsu, my stomach was fluttering so much and my heart was going, _boom boom_! You will understand it too, someday.”

Tsuna thinks of Kyouko.

Nana says, “Come here, Tsuna. I have a new recipe to teach you! When you become a wife, it is good to always have a variety in case your husband gets bored.” She continues chattering, heading off to the kitchen as a distant haze seems to settle around her.

No, Tsuna wants to scream. She follows.

 

* * *

 

It’s not like she hates cooking, she explains to Reborn later. He tilts his head in response. A prompt to continue.

She tries to find her words, to describe what it is that makes her mouth fill with blood. “It’s the ‘why’s’,” she finally decides. “She is training me to be like her.” Her eyes blaze. Determination. “I don’t want to be like her. A good wife.”

Reborn smirks. “Then don’t.”

And that’s it, isn’t it? Don’t.

“Never,” she swears and Reborn approves. 

**Author's Note:**

> Gender politics would be a fascinating concept to explore in this world.


End file.
